Inquiry · “You Are Not Your Thoughts”
Contemplating the Discriminations
Use the Advaitic discriminations of Self from not-Self as objects of deep, assenting reflection until the conviction passes from idea into recognition.
The Discriminations: Sit with Shankara’s discernment of Self from not-Self. First separate: of body, feeling, thought, role, ask “knower or known?” — whatever is known is not you. Then affirm the witnessing awareness that remains: “I am Atman.” Reflect that the shifting world is appearance and the Real alone abides. Let the two meet: “I am That” — the Self is not other than the Real. Hold it as sincere assent with the whole being, not a slogan, and don’t grab for an experience. The shift, if it comes, comes as recognition.
What it is
This is the practice Merrell-Wolff was doing at the threshold of his 1936 awakening: a slow, wholehearted contemplation of the great Advaitic discriminations — Shankara’s discernment of the Self (Atman) from everything that is not the Self.
Rather than treat statements like “I am Atman,” “the phenomenal world is appearance and the Real alone abides,” and “the Self is not other than the Real — I am That” as doctrines to memorise, the practitioner holds each one as an object of deep reflective assent, turning it over until intellectual agreement deepens into felt recognition.
Wolff’s report is striking precisely because the breakthrough came not in trance but while pondering Shankara’s analysis: the discrimination, fully accepted, suddenly opened. He saw that “genuine Realization, therefore, is a recognition of Nothing — but a Nothing that is absolutely Substantial and identical with the SELF.”
The Method
A faithful rendering of how Wolff used the discriminations:
- Take up the discrimination, slowly. Sit with one proposition at a time. Begin with the separation: of everything you can name — body, sensation, emotion, thought, role — ask “Is this the Self, the knower, or is it something known?” Whatever is known is set aside as not-Self. This is the classic neti-neti (“not this, not this”) movement.
- Affirm the Self that remains. Having stripped away the coverings, rest in and assent to “I am Atman” — the bare awareness that cannot be made into an object. Not as a boast of the personality, but as recognition of the impersonal witnessing principle (All Is One).
- Hold the discrimination of the Real. Reflect on the Advaitic claim that the shifting, sensible world is dependent appearance, while the substantial Reality is what the senses find least — Wolff’s inversion: “actual substantiality is inversely proportional to sensibility or ponderability.” Let the felt solidity of the outer world loosen.
- Let the two discriminations meet: “I am That.” Bring “I am the Self” and “the Real alone abides” together into the mahavakya recognition that the witnessing Self is not other than the one Reality. Hold it not as a conclusion to be proven but as a truth to be assented to with the whole being.
- Wait at the edge of assent. Do not grab for an experience (see his warning under Introception). Keep the contemplation warm and sincere; the shift, if it comes, comes as recognition — “the pure Atman. realized as absolute fullness and as identical with himself.” (Sourcing note: the three discriminations are rendered in the Advaitic / Shankaran form Wolff was working with; quoted phrases are short attributed renderings from Pathways Through to Space. The numbered protocol is a faithful description.)
Source & Lineage
The substance is Shankara’s Advaita Vedanta — the discrimination (viveka) of Self from not-Self and the mahavakyas such as Tat Tvam Asi (“Thou art That”) and So’ham (“I am That”).
Wolff’s contribution, recorded in Pathways Through to Space (1944), is the first-person, dated account of using these discriminations as living contemplative objects and breaking through while reflecting on them — joining Eastern jnana yoga to his Western analytic temperament.
Common refinements
Reciting, not reflecting. Repeating “I am That” as a slogan does little; Wolff’s breakthrough came from discrimination behind the words — actually distinguishing knower from known.
- Ego-inflation. “I am Atman” affirms the impersonal Self; mistaking it for “my little self is divine” is the classic error.
- Grabbing for the experience. Treating the propositions as a lever to force an opening reintroduces the “seeking a subtle object” trap; hold them as sincere assent and wait.
- Refinement: spend most of the sitting on the separation (neti-neti) first; the affirmation “I am That” lands far deeper once the not-Self has genuinely fallen away.